Harrison Bergeron is a very short short story by Kurt Vonnegut. A brief background of the piece was posted last Friday on the Blog, Ten Weeks of Summer.
The story is one that should be read by every freedom loving American, who believes in the rights of the individual. It is reminiscent of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, published in 1932.
First published in 1961, the story has been characterized as a dystopian science fiction, and is as clear a repudiation of egalitarianism as will be found anywhere. In a society where trophies are awarded simply for participating, high schools are afraid to name any one student the class valedictorian, girls must receive an equal number of athletic scholarships as boys (even though their sports generate very little revenue for their schools), and female sailors are about to be assigned to submarines, a story such as this has never been more timely.
You can read the whole story in less than 10 minutes, here.
In 1995, a movie based loosely on Harrison Bergeron was produced for cable television, starring Sean Astin and Christopher Plummer (pictured above). Here's a short clip from the movie.
